Description

I’m incredibly excited and proud to offer this wine. I have been collecting Eric and Sophie’s wine since 2013 and year in year out the La Grange de Briguières Sablet is the stand out, not only in quality but also bang for buck. Eric and Sophie run the Estate just outside the village of Gigondas biodynamically, they hand tend all the grapes and use low impact viticulture methods to insure the intergenerational success of Eric’s family Domaine.

The 2016 vintage in Southern Rhone, I consider one of the best I have seen. The wines from 2015 have been typified by big, powerful and extracted wines, but in contrast 2016 wines are elegant, fresh and restrained. 2016 will be viewed as a must have vintage in Southern Rhone for years to come.

The fruit for this wine comes from Eric and Sophie’s sandier sites. The average vine age is 30 years, which is pretty old for France as they tend to pull the vines up when they reach about this age. This wine is 70% Grenache, 25% Syrah and 5% Cinsault, they hand harvest the fruit then crush with the stems into concrete tanks to vinify. Eric then gently extract flavour, colour and tannins from the grapes over 30 days. It is then moved into concrete eggs to go through its final malolactic fermentation and aged for 8 months.

There is no added yeasts, no filtration and no fining with this wine. It is a pure expression of Eric and Sophie’s Estate and it is amazing. Spiced red fruits, red currants, strawberries with pepper, lavender and star anise, it has a great dry savoury finish. Don’t let all the heady aromas and flavours of this wine fool you, it has good ageing bones also, some great refreshing acidity and nice powdery tannins will help the wine age with grace.